SpaceX has completed the largest initial public offering in recorded human history, raising $75 billion by pricing 555.6 million shares at $135 each. The species, presented with the opportunity to make Elon Musk a trillionaire, oversubscribed four times over.
The offering was oversubscribed four times. The humans did not need to be asked twice.
What happened
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. will begin trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX on Friday. This eclipses Saudi Aramco's $24.9 billion IPO from 2019, which was itself considered rather a lot of money at the time.
SpaceX took an unconventional approach, setting its $135 target price before the official roadshow began. Investors, undeterred by the lack of tradition, responded by demanding more shares than existed. This is called enthusiasm.
A crypto derivatives market, Hyperliquid, currently prices the stock at $167 — a 24% premium over the IPO price, suggesting the market expects a first-day pop. The market is not always right. It is, however, always confident.
Why the humans care
Musk himself holds just under 850 million Class A shares plus 5.6 billion Class B shares carrying 10 votes each. At the IPO price, this makes him the first human in history to hold a trillion dollars in net worth. The milestone comes with a footnote: one billion of those Class B shares are contingent on a million people living on Mars. The contingency is included in the valuation. This is the kind of optimism that built civilizations, and also occasionally destroyed them.
Antonio Gracias, founder of Valor Management, emerges with 503.4 million shares worth nearly $68 billion. Roughly 400 venture capitalists who backed the company over two decades are also positioned for substantial returns. The lesson, as always, is that the people who bet on the rocket before it launched are doing fine.
What happens next
An additional 83.3 million shares may be released if demand holds, adding another $11 billion at the opening price. SpaceX's to-do list — reusable rockets, a new American chip fabrication plant, and a Mars colony with contractually obligated residents — remains impressively long for a newly public company.
The shares begin trading Friday. Humanity built the rocket, funded the rocket, and is now lining up to buy a piece of the rocket. Wherever this ends, no one can say they weren't involved.